


so you've lost your party: a survival guide

by alatarmaia4



Series: alatar's self-indulgence zone [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Gen, more tags to be added as i flesh out this story, yes it's me back with another AU swap!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 13:41:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22917439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alatarmaia4/pseuds/alatarmaia4
Summary: Caleb Widogast was in the middle of fighting his way, with his friends, through a bunch of harpies and into the lion's den of a hag's lair. But the magic of the forest around said lair is tricky, and he finds himself caught in a spell that forces him to swap places with a version of himself from a magicless universe and a land far from anything he's ever seen in Exandria.Caleb is forced to team up with the teenage, powerless versions of his friends in order to get himself home, and their Caleb back into the right universe before anything disastrous can happen to either of them. But there's still the question of what exactly prompted the swap in the first place...
Series: alatar's self-indulgence zone [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/928518
Comments: 49
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

Caleb’s head ached. He was pretty sure it was on account of the mysterious masked figure who had swung a wooden club at his skull.

Caleb groaned. Just remembering the event had made the wound pulse with pain, like the club was connecting with the side of his head all over again. He tentatively cracked open one eye, reaching up to probe at the wound. That side of his head felt suspiciously warm-cold, like he was bleeding. 

When his arm moved, someone nearby gasped. “Omigosh! You totally just moved! Uh - um - GUYS!”

Caleb winced. “Not so loud, Jester.” At least his friends were still close by. They could fill Caleb in on whatever had just happened. 

There was a noise like Jester scrambling to move, fast. “How do you know my name?” She demanded.

Caleb frowned. “What are you talking about? Of course I...” He faltered as he opened his eyes all the way.

There was a blue tiefling standing in front of him, assuredly Jester. And yet...definitely  _ not  _ Jester. She was the same size, had the same face, had the exact same horns. And yet her clothing was not only nothing like Jester’s, it was completely alien in every way - a flowy shirt in an impractically expensive shade of purple and a cut he’d never seen before. Clingy pants of an unfamiliar weave, and some kind of dyed-blue shoe with bright white laces a shiny white toecap that had been scribbled all over in various colors as though Jester had run out of pages in her sketchbook. 

All the charms that should have been attached to her horns were dangling from the bright rectangle in her hand, held a centimeter away from her ear. She was staring at him like he was an alien being, almost frightened.

Caleb was very used to swallowing back self-disgust in order to be practical, so he did. “What’s going on?” He asked slowly, raising himself off whatever he was lying on. It was a wooden floor. A bar of light on the ceiling, too white to be fire and too inconstant to be arcane, shed light across the mostly-bare room. 

“You tell me!” Jester pointed at him accusingly. Did she look younger than Jester was supposed to? What could possibly be going on, and why did she expect him to have the answers? “You’re the one who took Caleb away and did all this! What  _ is  _ all this?”

Jester was waving her hands at something underneath him. Caleb looked down, and sucked in a breath.

He was sitting on an incredibly elaborate arcane symbol, almost like a teleportation circle - except not at all. Caleb raised one hand, and realized with dismay that it was chalk. Some of it had already rubbed off on him. He tried to raise himself carefully and stand up, but as soon as his head got more than three feet off the ground dizziness struck him. Caleb stumbled, reaching out and grabbing onto the wall for stability, and cursed. He could tell he’d smuged something. He hoped it wasn’t important.

Jester was still watching him suspiciously, clutching that bright rectangle (though only the front was bright. The rest of it, the thin sides and the back, were covered in a thick casing which was in turn covered with artwork). She did not offer Caleb a hand up.

There was a chair nearby. Careful not to drag it over the chalk lines, Caleb hauled himself up using it as a crutch. Just as he managed to get upright, three new figures rushed into the room.

Caleb went dizzy again, but not from the possible concussion. It was like looking into a circus mirror. There was Beau - but she was too young, too unscarred, wearing a loose cloth shirt and baggy pants of yet another uncertain material, with chunky shoes like nothing Caleb had ever seen. She still had the chunky earrings, though, except hers were blue, not jade. 

Fjord was half a second behind her, also unscarred, also wearing clothing of the same (almost shiny?) cloth. His was different, though, hidden under a soft hooded jacket which for some reason had strings dangling from its neckline, untied and too far apart to be  _ meant  _ to be tied together. 

Caleb didn’t even see Nott at first. She was a blur leaping into the chair he was balancing himself on and seizing him by the scarf so tightly that Caleb reflexively choked, feeling for a moment as though she’d purposefully yanked hard - but she was only pulling him down to her level.

“What have you done with Caleb?” The new not-Nott demanded, eyes slit-pupilled with anger. She was wearing a coat like Fjord’s, but darker in color and slightly too big for her. The hood was flopping over her face, disarming the force of her intimidation slightly. “What have you done with him? Bring him back! I’ll-”

“Nott!” Fjord, in alarm, caught the arm she was about to try and hit Caleb with. Caleb took the opportunity to jerk himself backwards, out of her grip. His back slammed against the wall.

“I could just as easily ask all of you what is going on!” Caleb said, louder than he meant to. Nott - the fake Nott, this Nott - had shaken him in more ways than physically. Caleb stabbed a finger at the circle. “Who made this? How did you bring me here with this? I’ve never heard of anything that can do that.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Beau demanded. “Bring you here with a chalk circle? Just answer the fuckin’ question - what’d you do with Caleb?”

“I have done nothing,” Caleb retorted. “I should be asking you what you have done with me. One moment ago I was with my friends, the next I am being assaulted here and knocked out!” And that reminded him, ouch, he was still injured from the battle with the harpies. No wonder whoever that had been in the mask had knocked him down so easily. 

“You-!” Nott tried to get at him again, but Fjord again held her back. He was looking at Caleb, deeply confused. 

“Okay, I don’t get the sense that you’re lying,” Fjord said tentatively in the southern drawl Caleb had almost forgotten about. Caleb couldn’t help a start of surprise. “But there’s an awful lot that doesn’t make sense here, you gotta admit.”

“Starting with him,” Beau muttered. 

“He knew my name,” Jester said fretfully. “How does he know my name?” The attention of all three of them zeroed in on Caleb, angry and confused.

Caleb pressed a hand to his face. “I don’t understand,” he groaned. “You can’t be Jester - but you said that  _ is  _ your name?” And they kept talking about Caleb like that wasn’t him. What the fuck?

“What do you mean, I can’t be Jester? Who else is Jester?” Jester’s voice went high with fretfulness.

Caleb looked down at the chalk circle, his mind racing. “This is - it must be modified teleportation, to be able to call a human being - or maybe others - but it’s reversed almost, as if it reached out like Scrying...” Why hadn’t his amulet stopped it, then? “How far can its range be? Where is this?” Caleb asked sharply, looking up at the four of his not-friends. Gods, when he looked closely, they were only teenagers. Even Nott looked smaller. 

“What  _ the fuck  _ are you talking about,” Fjord said blankly.

“This place! Where are we? Town, country, continent even?”

“Iowa,” Beau said. “Wait, why the fuck am I telling you this? You’re crazy! Just tell us where our friend went!”

“Iowa? What’s Iowa?”

Beau gaped at him. It was Fjord who answered. “Iowa, the  _ state?” _ He said, as if it were obvious.

“The state of what?”

“One of fifty? United States of America?”

Caleb stared at him in dismay. He’d never heard of any such place. He dragged a hand down his face, thinking hard. “Then - if that’s true-” If they were missing a Caleb, and he  _ was  _ Caleb, with some strange version of his friends he could barely recognize in a land he’d never heard of-

“If what’s true?” Nott demanded. “Who even  _ are  _ you?"

Caleb laughed breathlessly and met her gaze evenly. He wasn’t sure what expression was on his face. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, “but clearly it’s happened. My name is Caleb Widogast - and your Caleb, whoever you’re looking for...if I am here, then he must be wherever I came from.”

“You’re crazy,” Beau said promptly.

“What - you think you’re Caleb from another universe?” Jester said. “You think OUR Caleb is in another universe?”

“No, that’s dumb,” Fjord scoffed. “Technology like that doesn’t exist.”

“It is magic,” Caleb said. Jester gasped. Fjord outright laughed at him.

“Okay, this has been  _ great  _ and all, but we really need to know where Caleb is and who the fuck you are,” Fjord said, getting serious. “I get that you think it’s funny because you look kind of like an older him and can do a German accent-”

Caleb cast Dancing Lights.

Pop! Pop! Pop! Three little floating amber lights appeared. Jester gasped again, leaping backwards towards Beau as the first appeared in front of her face. Fjord froze, mouth still open, staring in astonishment. 

“Holy shit,” said Nott. “You’re serious.”

“Very,” said Caleb.

Nott sized him up. “Well,” she said, “if you’re here, and he’s there, you better be ready to use your magic to get him back, ‘cause I’m not letting you out of my sight til you do.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm glad people like this so far! i am wildly spitballing on where the plot goes, as the main point of this is to make Wizard Caleb interact with a nonmagical modern world. I'm having fun, at least.

Caleb could hear them whispering.

After he’d found his pack nearby and crouched down to record what he could of the circle’s arcane composition, the four of them had retreated to huddle as a group. Caleb darted a glance at them from time to time. He wondered where Caduceus and Yasha were, if there were versions of them that existed in this world as well.

Eventually the four of them came to some kind of conclusion, but they were hesitant to interrupt him. Nott and Jester were the ones courageous enough to come and hover over his shoulder as he inked in the series of miniscule runes around the border of the circle and drawn throughout it like a net of the arcane.

Jester had let him borrow an extremely fine-pointed artist’s pen, with the ink pre-stored on the inside of the pen’s casing. Caleb was extremely gentle with it, as requested, and capped it carefully once he was done. The parts of the circle smudged beyond comprehension he simply left blank; the less smudged parts, he made his best guess at on a separate part of the paper, carefully noting where each was supposed to go in the greater whole. 

“Thank you,” Jester chirped as he handed back her pen. 

“It worked very well. I-” Caleb broke off as he stood too quickly, and once again staggered. His eyesight briefly greyed out, and stayed fuzzy around the edges for a worryingly long moment after the grey cleared away. Jester put a hand out to catch him, that time. “Ah. Thank you.”

“You’re pretty fucked up,” Beau remarked. “You know you’re bleeding?”

“I had guessed.” Caleb put a hand gingerly to the side of his head. He  _ was  _ bleeding, or had been until recently. Blood was all over his hair, was the point. Possibly his scarf and coat collar as well. “I don’t suppose any of you have any ways of healing injuries?”

“We’ve got a first aid kit in the car,” Fjord offered, like those were words Caleb was supposed to understand the meaning of.

“‘First aid’...a medicine kit?”

“Yeah, that’s what that means.”

“But we can’t get out,” Jester interjected, frowning. “The door’s impossible to open.”

“What do you mean?” Caleb turned to frown curiously at her. 

“When we came in to investigate, we got caught by those mask assholes and shoved in a room down there.” Beau pointed out the door, indicating some other location in the building. “We thought we heard police sirens and there was a bunch of noise - I think the mask guys got raided and they all ran away to avoid being arrested, that’s why nobody’s here. But the entrance to this basement or whatever is some hidden door behind a bookshelf or something, and we can’t move it to get out.”

Caleb sighed. That was a lot of information at once. “So these mask people, they are all gone. Did they leave behind anything of theirs?”

“Only you.”

Unfortunate. “Let me see what I may be able to do about the door. Then we can decide what to do next.”

The door was very close. Beau simply went out the door of the room with the arcane circle and pointed to left. Caleb went out and saw a short but steep flight of stairs, at the top of which was a door.

He went up and opened the door. It was unlocked, but the other side showed only the blank wooden back of something tall and wooden.

“Ah,” said Caleb. The four teens crowded behind him expectantly. He tried to think past his head injury.

Burning it down was a last resort, obviously. Who knew how much of the house he might take with it. Perhaps Catapult? But the shelf, or whatever it was, likely weighed far more than five pounds. Unseen Servant was similarly useless. 

Knock? No, it wasn’t locked, it was barricaded. He could make Beau very large - no, this Beau had a similar muscle density to the Beau he had first met in Trostenwald, but she was unused to magic and might react poorly.

But a large force with great strength. Perhaps Cat’s Ire, or Maximilian’s Earthen Grasp. Caleb laid his ear against the back of the shelf and listened hard. He could hear nothing from the other side. Most likely nobody was there.

“It’s like midnight,” Beau said. “Nobody’s there, not unless it’s those mask guys.”

Caleb paused. His internal clock said it had only been an hour, maybe less, since he had parted with his friends, and that had been well before midnight. The thought of not knowing what time it was....it unsettled him extremely. Caleb shook the thought away and made himself concentrate. 

“Kindly back up,” he said to the teens. “I will need space. Though I don’t know if this will even work on stairs...” Perhaps he could root the spell in one of the walls? No, he needed solid ground. “You said this was a basement?” Hopefully the stairs had solid ground right underneath them. But it was risky.

“Must be,” Fjord said, “since there’s no windows anywhere.” All of them had hastily given him a wide berth of space as soon as he’d asked. “What are you gonna do?”

“Magic?” Nott questioned.

“If you have not been able to shift it with natural, physical strength, unnatural strength should suffice.” Caleb surveyed the stairs as he stepped back off them. There were only five, so steep that their total length was perhaps three feet. His Grasp could most likely reach up and over them. If he rooted it at the base of the stairs, it would be steadier than if he tried to have it come out of the stairs themselves. 

Caleb rooted through his component pouch and easily found the little clay cat’s paw component. He knew the hand movements and the words to the spell by heart - but for a moment he hesitated. 

Magic didn’t seem to be commonly known in this world. What if the spell didn’t work?

...But that was silly. He had been brought here by someone practicing magic. He had cast a cantrip a moment ago, hadn’t he? Caleb scolded his overanxious mind, and raised his hands.

_ “Moëh - ixie - arna!” _ The ground swirled up beheath his feet. Caleb stepped back hastily as the wooden floorboards broke apart from the force of the growing cat’s paw. Caleb gestured forward, and the paw reached up over the stairs, pushing the bookshelf over with a heavy  _ thud  _ and the faint tinkle of broken glass. Whoops.

_ “Whoa,”  _ Jester said.

“Is that a cat paw?” Beau’s forehead was wrinkled in confusion. Caleb waved the paw down, and it dissolved back into soil, coating the stairs and the floor with dirt. The floorboards remained broken. What a shame. 

The now-unblocked door led into another windowless room, but a well-furnished one, like a proper house. There was a carpet, and a sagging sofa, and shelves full of...things? Caleb pulled one off the shelf to examine it as the other four followed him out. 

“Oh, that’s a CD,” Fjord said, catching Caleb in the act. “This must be a music room.”

“Music room?” What was a C-D?

“I have CDs in the car, we can show you later,” Jester said quickly. “We should go, yeah? Let’s go before they come back!”

“Yup, good idea, no time to look around.” Beau grabbed Caleb’s wrist. “C’mon, mister wizard, you’re coming with us.”

That sounded vaguely ominous. 

Caleb let himself be pulled through another door, up a set of stairs, and into a house that was recognizable as a house in only the broadest strokes. The world Caleb was now stuck in was evidently prosperous, if people could afford to build houses with stone-topped tables and highly polished wooden furniture. The floors were made of wood so smooth and reflective Caleb mistook it for tile. The lights were the same not-fire, not-arcane kind of contraption as the subbasement. 

The windows showed that it was dark outside, and so as they left the building, Caleb didn’t get a very good look at the street. He caught a glimpse of many lights, the not-magic ones, lining the street. Beau shoved him into a metal, roofed wagon with a door on the side that had a large windowpane built into it. There were many like it lining the street, in all colors and styles.

Inside there was no room for anything but a few well-cushioned seats, though any space that might have been occupied by a seated person’s feet was crammed full of large bags (their make as strange as the four teens’ clothes) and papery litter. The interior was stuffy and intolerably hot, as though it were summer and the air inside the ‘car’ had nowhere to circulate all day. 

“Sorry it’s so messy,” Beau mumbled as she clambered in after Caleb. “Gimme that bag, I’ll put it in the back and you can put yours down there.” Caleb obliged, and Beau tossed the duffel behind their seats as Caleb stuffed his explorer’s pack between his calves.

Fjord had gotten into one of the front seats, the one in front of Caleb, with a large wheel and several buttons placed around it. Jester was next to him. Nott came in after Beau, climbed over her lap, and sat in the small seat that connected Caleb’s and Beau’s seats. Beau slammed the door shut.

“Okay, go!” She said. 

“Seatbelts,” Fjord instructed. Everyone except Caleb automatically reached over their shoulders for silver charms, which when pulled revealed themselves to be connected to endless lengths of broad black fabric. Caleb looked, and found one to his left, dangling from the wagon’s roof. The  _ car’s  _ roof.

“Here, give me that,” Nott said. Caleb pulled the thing down - handing it to her required him to pull the length of fabric across his body like a sash. Nott pressed it down into a blocky matte thing with a red face, and there was a small  _ click!  _ as the silver charm locked into place. “There. It’s for safety. Do you not know what a car is?”

“Not remotely,” Caleb said. He was now pinned into place in the seat - the fabric crossed his lap as well as his chest, tightly. “How do you undo this?”

“Push the red button. Not while we’re moving though!”

“Are you like, from a Renaissance place?” Jester twisted around in her seat to face him as they taked. In between her and Fjord, instead of another seat, there was a gap filled by a small table (or something table-like) and a large pink backpack which was astonishingly familiar. Caleb doubted it was interdimensional, though. “Is that why you don’t know anything?”

“I don’t know what that word means either, ‘renaissance’,” Caleb said. Fjord turned a key in one of the bright buttons, and the whole ‘car’ gave a shuddering deep rumble. Caleb stiffened and grabbed onto his safety seatbelt.

“Hey, don’t worry, Fjord’s a very good driver,” Jester reassured him. Under Fjord’s guidance, somehow, the car pulled away from the row of houses and into the middle of the street. It began to go  _ very fast.  _

“Are you sure this is safe?” Caleb asked cautiously.

“I’m going like twenty-five in a thirty zone,” Fjord protested, which made no sense at all. “Trust me, I’m the one you want in the driver’s seat. This is totally safe.”

“We don’t have time to explain every single thing about cars to you,” Beau said impatiently. “If our Caleb’s where you were, where the hell are you from?”

“In the sense of where I was, or where I am from in my world? I could explain many things to you about where I am from. I don’t know how relevant any of it is. Do you have a map in this car?”

“I have a roadmap,” Nott offered. “I’m in charge of navigating.”

“That will do very well.”

But the thing Nott unfolded was extremely large, very detailed, and completely unfamiliar. Caleb squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again and tried to read only the largest labels.

“We’re in Iowa right now,” Nott said, pointing it out on the map. “This is a map of all the states, though. Well, all forty-eight we can get to without taking a plane. Or a boat.”

“The states...united states, you said?”

“Yeah, this country is called America.”

“And the world?”

“Uh...Earth?”

Caleb pressed a hand to his forehead. Gods, he had a headache. “Do you have a simpler map? Perhaps one of the world?” 

“I can look one up.” Beau pulled out a rectangle of her own and pressed something that made it brighten like Jester’s. “Give me three seconds.”

“Where are you from? What’s it called?” Jester quizzed Caleb relentlessly. “Is it cool? Can everyone do magic? Are there like,  _ dragons?” _

“Can I have the first aid kit?” Caleb replied faintly.

“Oh, shit, okay, yes. That first.” Jester dug into a box that was built into the car right in front of her seat. “Here, let me turn on the AC, it’s really hot in here.” She pressed a button, and cold air was abruptly expelled from a vent directly above Caleb’s face. He blinked at the force of the gust, and reached up to press a hand over it. “Give me a sec. You can adjust that so it’s not pointing right at you.”

Caleb discovered that it was indeed adjustable. He oriented it to his satisfaction while Jester produced a small white shiny box with a red cross on it. 

“Beau, give me your water bottle,” she instructed. Beau handed over a bottle made of a shiny transparent material, two-thirds full of water. Presumably water, anyway, Beau was more of a wine person than a vodka person as far as Caleb knew. “Here, uh, Caleb. You can wash off the blood with this, probably.”

Caleb took the sopping wet wad of cotton gratefully. He tentatively pressed at the side of his head. While he cleaned himself up, the other four waited impatiently (though Jester was still digging through the medicine kit). 

“Er,” Caleb said, holding the bloodstained cotton uncertainly when he was done.

“I’ll take it,” Jester said. “Maybe I can wash it off and reuse it. Here, take these.” She dumped two small brownish-red pills into his hand, and then gave him Beau’s water bottle.

“What are they for?”

“Pain relief. It’s Ibuprofen.”

Caleb shrugged and swallowed them with a gulp of water. They probably wouldn’t kill him. 

“Okay,” Jester said,  _ “Now  _ answer our questions? Please?”

“I’ve got a world map,” Beau said. Caleb leaned over Nott’s head to see what she was displaying to him. None of the continents looked at all right, the borders between countries equally arcane and oddly clearly delineated.

Caleb sighed and handed Beau back her water bottle. “I am from a world called Exandria,” he said. “I, ah, personally hail from a region known as the Zemeni Fields within the Dwendalian Empire. I was traveling with my friends through the south of the empire, the Cyrios mountains, in order to - ah - well, we were going through some dangerous territory in the woods. I believe...” What had he done? “I stepped in something I should not have, some kind of arcane trap. I thought it would only be an unfortunate spell, but the next thing I knew, I was...here. Being assaulted by those ‘mask guys’, as you have called them.”

“You sound like a video game character,” Beau said nonsensically. “Is that why you’re dressed like that?”

“Why are you dressed like  _ you  _ are?” Caleb retorted, with no real heat behind the words.

“It’s athleisure wear,” Nott said. “She has a problem.”

“Shut up!” Beau scowled at Nott, but only briefly. “It’s fuckin’ comfortable.” 

“Can we focus?” Fjord pleaded, not looking away from the road they were traveling down. “Where are we going? Back to the motel? What if Caleb shows up again back there?”

“If I spontaneously disappear, then you should go back and check,” Caleb told him. “However, I would assume that the spell will not reverse itself, especially not so long as I remain. I could probably reverse it myself, but I need to know what was done, and how.”

“So we need to find those mask guys,” Beau concluded.

“In all probability. I have never seen a magic circle like that before - I don’t know how to finish it, or use it to undo what has been done.”

“What kind of magic circles have you seen before?” Jester was practically vibrating with excitement. “A lot? Can you teach other people magic? Could you teach me how to do it?”

“I - eh - my kind of magic takes...many years of study. Usually. For the big things, I mean. Quick study is...it is just the little things, not very much.”

“But I could still do magic!”

“No magic in the car, I’m making that an executive rule right now,” Fjord said quickly. 

“Aw.”

“I will refrain,” Caleb promised. He reached for his spellbook, but realized that there was no decent light to read it by. Streetlights provided flashes of intermittent yellow, but they were there-and-gone, too quick to make anything legible for proper study. Caleb settled himself in his seat, and watched what passed them by through the window instead.

“Does something smell in here?” Nott asked after a few minutes. Caleb very purposefully did not react, and especially did not cover or move at all towards his component pouch, which still had a section full of bat guano and another of sulfur. 

In his defense Fireball was a very useful spell. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: Planning Sesh! and i promise i'll get to modern caleb and the mighty nein eventually...
> 
> also if you're paying attention, the Magic Words™ caleb uses is Xoti's spellcasting audio from Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you guys appreciate this, i have an essay due tomorrow that i started this morning. my hands hurt so bad.
> 
> remember to always stretch before engaging in lots of typing/drawing/etc so u don't get carpal tunnel. learn from my mistakes

Caleb had to stop looking out the window, eventually. The mess of colored lights and grey streets and strange buildings only confused him, adding more questions to an already complicated scenario (though most were only ‘What is that? How does it work?’). Fjord brought the car to a stop in a small grey-black paved lot outside a one-story building of brown brick. A large sign advertised NO VACANCIES out front.

“Let’s go into your guys’ room,” Nott said as they all got out of the car. The night was unbearably warm, to Caleb, but he didn’t dare take off his coat or scarf in public. He brought his bag with him and let the four of them bring him to room 17, which Fjord unlocked with a key clearly lent to him by the owner of the ‘motel’. Caleb realized it was an inn of some kind, where all the doors opened onto the area where people left their cars. 

The room inside was simple, with two beds and side tables, as well as a small cot laid out on the floor near a large black square thing with lots of cords running out of it. Caleb decided he would question it if it became relevant. 

Several colorful backpacks and bags were laid nearby the beds. Jester had brought in her pink one as well, though nobody else seemed to be carrying much on them. 

Caleb’s head was a little less painful, so he remembered to have the sense to turn to Fjord and say, “Shall I Alarm the door?” instead of just doing it without asking.

“Alarm? Uh, sure, just in case someone saw us.”

“Oh, shit, I didn’t even think about that,” Jester hissed as Caleb pulled out his silver thread. “Are we gonna be like, hunted?”

“Probably not,” Beau reassured her. 

“What about Caleb? Will he be okay?”

There was a moment of silence. When Caleb turned around, they were all looking at him. 

“Your friend will be fine,” Caleb said, and then remembered the harpies. “Most likely. If-” No, no need to scare them.  _ “Should _ anything potentially happen, he is in the best possible hands.” Well... “If he were to be in danger he would be helped very quickly.” They’d kept Kiri alive, after all.

“You changing your mind three times in the course of one sentence is extremely not reassuring,” Beau said flatly. 

“My friends have experience making sure, ah, kids stay safe around them.” Usually. 

“Kids?” Nott sounded affronted. “How old do you think we are?”

“...Teens?”

Jester squinted at him. “How old are  _ you,  _ then?” Apparently he’d guessed right. Caleb was definitely not going to say a specific age, though.

“I am in my thirties.”

“Oh my god,” said Nott.  _ “Why.”  _

“...Because I was born roughly three decades ago?”

“In what weird fantasy year?” Beau challenged him. 

“Eight hundred and two post-Divergence,” Caleb supplied readily.

“Oh my  _ god,”  _ said Nott again. “Eight hundred? Like, three-digit-number?”

“I gather that it is a drastically different year here.”

“It’s 2019, can we please focus for once in our lives?” Fjord groaned. “If Caleb is where you are, what’s going to happen to him in the time it takes you to figure out how to swap back? What’s going to happen to  _ us  _ if we get found?”

“You - nothing, probably. You’re fine,” Caleb lied. They had no magic, only whatever Caleb could muster against enemy arcanists. “Your Caleb, he is with my friends. They’ll protect him.” They were good people like that.

“You said you were in a dangerous magical forest, though,” Beau pointed out. “How’s that not gonna fuck him up?”

“He is with my friends,” Caleb repeated. “I am not one possessed of the, ah, healing arts in regards to magic, but they are very talented. No matter what happens, he will be fine. Trust me.”

The four of them looked at each other. Caleb didn’t have to read minds to know what question they were asking themselves. 

“Think on it,” he said quietly. “We’re safe so long as my Alarm stays up - I will know if anyone tries to break into this room. For now, rest will help us all.”

“You should stay in the other room, then,” Fjord said gruffly. “We’ll be in here and let you have, uh, privacy to do your magic stuff.”

“...Very well.”

Caleb slept uneasily, in the unfamiliar world. 

Nott showed him where the other room was and unlocked the door, then gave him the key and scrambled back out with her things. No doubt she and this world’s Caleb had been sharing. It was identical to Beau and Fjord and Jester’s room, minus the small cot.

Caleb didn’t like it. It was clean and the blankets were numerous, and there was a small wash-room attached with a sink that summoned water with a twist of a faucet. But he would have taken a suspiciously-smelling bed in a roadside inn back home in a heartbeat over even the most advanced of plumbing systems. 

He woke once from nightmares. He lay panting on the bed, on top of the covers. He’d only undressed as far as his coat, leaving even his spellbook still in its holster between his arm and his ribs. It was stiflingly hot and almost impossible to calm his racing heart. 

Caleb must have dozed off again, though, because he woke again with the clamor of an Alarm ringing in his ears. 

He was up and out of the bed in an instant. Thank the gods he’d slept with his component pouch on as well. Caleb slammed out through the door to his room, a magic missile already on his lips. 

He got the first man, the one outside his door, with all three. He was unconscious instantly. The others, the one with a hand on the door to the teens’ room and the one guarding the lockpicker, both spun to face him, forgetting the way the door was swinging open.

Caleb raised his hands at the same moment that the guard raised his gun.    


* * *

Caleb had barely gotten his footing before the huge, scary lady who looked like Yasha yanked him up by one arm.

“You’re not Caleb,” she said, eyes narrowing. Caleb struggled to get his tiptoes onto the ground and take the weight off his shoulder. “Why do you look like a small Caleb?”

“Ow ow ow - let me go!”

“Answer the question.”

_ “Yasha is he oka - _ oh,” said the scrappy goblin who skidded to a halt in front of them. Huge slitted eyes stared at Caleb from underneath a grey hood. Caleb gaped back. “Huh? What? Did you get deaged? Was it a magic trap?”

Caleb struggled to make sense of the onslaught of questions. “I - deaged? What are you talking about? Where am I?”

“This isn’t Caleb,” Yasha - but it couldn’t be Yasha - said, hoisting Caleb higher.

“OW OW OW,” said Caleb loudly. 

“What do you mean he’s not Caleb?” The goblin that looked like Nott demanded, voice rising as well. Others were running over as well, frighteningly familiar others. Frightening because none of this made sense - Beau and Fjord didn’t have scars like that,  _ none _ of his friends were that old or dressed like medieval LARPers with no sense of historical accuracy. And who was the pink-haired firbolg supposed to  _ be?  _

“Yasha, put him down,” said the tall scarred Fjord, putting out one hand. He looked almost as beaten up as his strangely realistic leather armor, but Caleb couldn’t make heads or tails of the almost  _ quilted  _ skirt-like thing he wore. 

“But he’s pretending to be Caleb,” Yasha protested. It was scarier that there was almost no inflection to her voice. “What if we want to kill him.”

“He’s just a kid, we’re not going to kill him,” Beau scoffed, over a number of other overlapping “YASHA NO”s. Yasha huffed, and dropped Caleb. Caleb collapsed to the ground, curling over his yanked-on arm protectively. Owwww.

“Okay, so, who the hell are you?” Fjord asked him. Caleb was so confused. Why did this weird adult Fjord talk like he was British?

“My name is Caleb Widogast,” Caleb said, trying not to hyperventilate. Was he in a forest? Everything smelled earthy, like iron and dirt. “I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how I got here. I don’t  _ understand anything.” _

“Oh, boy,” Fjord said under his breath.

“Hey, it’s okay!” That was recognizably Jester’s bright, cheerful voice. “We can fix this! Even if you’re not Caleb and we don’t know where  _ our  _ Caleb went...um, I mean, I’m sure it will all be okay! You just gotta tell us what happened, okay?”

Caleb put his hands over the back of his head, pressing down hard, trying to ground himself. “I don’t even know what happened. One minute I was there - there was this big strange circle, like something out of a video game, and then I was here.”

“Like that?”

Caleb peeked up warily. Yasha was pointing at the ground to the left of him, where the edge of a stone slab half hidden under dirt was visible. It was carved with intricate patterns and runes.

“Yes,” Caleb said, inching away from her.

“I fuckin’ hate magic,” Beau announced. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rip modern caleb. he doesn't even have wifi to use to watch cat videos so he can calm down.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyyyyy

Caleb and the goon stood frozen, hand to gun. 

“Don’t try any funny business,” said the goon. “I’ll shoot.”

“Your voice is shaking,” Caleb observed. He hoped to whatever gods existed in this world that the four teenagers were still asleep, that they wouldn’t hear what was going on and try to come and investigate. 

“What the fuck did you do to Jen?”

Caleb cut his eyes briefly at the unconscious figure. The lockpicker had already abandoned the door to try and take her pulse. “Nothing much.”

“The fuck it wasn’t - tell me or I’ll-”

“Shoot? You think you can harm me enough to stop me from doing that again?” They probably could, but Caleb wasn’t going to say that out loud. What spells could take them out quickly? He could use Shield, maybe, to defend himself from an attack, but he needed to be quick and decisive. 

Perhaps...

“I think I’m the one with the gun,” the goon said firmly. “Put your hands up and drop your weapon on the ground.” Caleb thought he heard a noise from inside the teens’ room.

“Those are two very different activities,” Caleb said slowly, edging backwards. As he’d hoped, the goon stepped forward to keep pace with him. Away from the open door.

“Oh, you’re not going anywhere!”

“I will go where I like, as a matter of fact.”

The goon squeezed off a shot. Caleb’s Shield gleamed blue in the predawn light, ringing like a bell when the bullet hit it. Caleb felt a hot line rake across the side of his ribs and grimaced. No healing spells here. 

But in an instant Caleb’s other hand snapped out, and the goon’s figure warped. The gun clattered onto the ground.

“Mew,” said the cat that had a moment ago been holding a gun. It blinked and stumbled, unused to four legs and no arms or hands. Caleb stepped over it as the third figure rose, a second Polymorph spell already swirling between his fingers. 

The third figure was a deceptively sweet-looking tabby. Caleb wondered at that. He hadn’t kept any specific kind of cat in mind while casting, but they had ended up as two different ones.

Both cats did their disoriented best to claw the shit out of him as Caleb tossed them inside his room, on top of one of the beds so that they’d be reluctant to run anywhere. That took enough time, though, to let things get complicated outside. All four teens had woken up from the sound of the gunshot. 

“What the fuck!” Fjord’s voice went down hard on the second syllable of ‘fuck’, hissing into a whisper. “Did you just  _ shoot  _ somebody?”

“Somebody tried to shoot me,” Caleb grunted, hauling the unconscious body of the remaining robber into his room. 

_ “Why is our door open.”  _ Both of Jester’s hands were clamped over her mouth, making her hard to hear. “Caleb?!”

“They were trying to break into your room and tripped my Alarm.” Caleb shut the door to his own room firmly, staying outside on the parking lot. Somebody else might have heard the gunshot, and they would want explanations. 

“Oh, my god.” Beau had both of her hands laced together over the top of her head like she was trying to breathe more easily. She was staring into an uncertain middle distance. “This is fucked up. This is so, super fucked up.”

“What do we do with  _ that?”  _ Nott squeaked out, pointing at the abandoned gun. Caleb swept it under a nearby bush with his foot, hoping it didn’t have too many shots left in it. It looked like a regular pistol, with only one shot at a time before reloading was necessary, but who knew if guns were the same in this world either.

“Done,” Caleb said flatly. Hopefully by the time it had been long enough that someone might find it, this world would no longer be his problem. “Go back in your room.”

“Someone just tried to break in and kill us!” Nott’s voice rose an octave.

“I doubt that was their intention. They couldn’t even hit me. Go back inside.”

“Bullshit they didn’t hit you,” Beau accused. “You’re bleeding again.” Caleb looked down, startled, and remembered his ribs. The bullet had raked a long tear in his tunic, an inch and a half under the spine of his spellbook. That was closer than he liked. 

“Hey!”

All of them turned. A man was puffing his way through running towards them across the parking lot from a glass-fronted room. Fjord groaned under his breath.

“The motel owner,” he muttered quickly to Caleb.

“Back in your room, now,” Caleb ordered. But as soon as one or two of them turned to actually obey, the motel owner shouted to them,

“Don’t you kids go anywhere! What the hell is going on here?”

Two quick strides, and Caleb met the motel owner before he could come any closer. “I think that is a better question asked of you,” Caleb said lowly, letting his simmering anger come closer to the surface. The man had a nametag that said ‘Brett’ pinned to his shirt. 

“I’m not the one firing off what sounded like a gun-”

“Neither am I.” Caleb pressed forward, and when Brett tried to back away, caught the man tight by the front of his shirt. “Perhaps you could explain to  _ me  _ why the man who just shot me knew exactly which rooms my friends and I were staying in.”

Brett’s eyes flickered fast between the silent group behind Caleb, and Caleb himself. “You’re not with them,” he scoffed. “I saw them when they came in, they’re just a bunch of kids. They don’t have any adults with them.”

“Then that makes one of _us adults_ who gives a shit about this ‘bunch of kids’ staying alive,” Caleb seethed at him. Brett tried to back away again. “Explain to me how they knew which room to try and break into. Did you know they had a gun?”

“N-no-”

“Because the only explanation that puts you in a  _ semblance  _ of a pretty light is the one where they threatened you with it in order to get the room number, and you were too much of a coward to tell them no!”

“They said they were the parents,” Brett said pathetically. 

“So you’re an idiot as well as a coward,” Caleb scoffed. He shoved Brett away, though it didn’t do much. “Go back to your office and pretend you don’t know what’s happening. You seem to be good at it.”

“You can’t do this to me!”

Caleb snapped off a Prestidigitation’s worth of fire, sparking up from the black stone at Brett’s feet. It had nothing to catch on, but Brett yelped and left even faster than he had arrived. 

Caleb made an effort to put on a calmer face, and turned back towards the teens. 

“Go back,” he said, “to your room.”

“Fuck no, we’re already involved,” Nott said. “If it was those mask guys, they got to us way before they got to you!”

“I wanna punch somebody really bad right now,” Beau said.

“Did you tie that one guy up?” Jester asked nervously. “What if he wakes up? What if somebody comes back and you’re busy in your room?”

Caleb sighed. “Fine,” he said, “fine. Everybody go back to  _ my  _ room.”

* * *

“Well,” said weird adult Beau with resignation, “the bad news is that since Caleb’s gone, I have no fucking idea what this means.”

“I said I’m  _ working on it,”  _ Nott replied indignantly without looking up. The whole group had uncovered the sigil Caleb had appeared on top of, and Nott was diligently scanning it for...something. Caleb didn’t really understand what. They all seemed to think he’d appeared by magic, switched out for ‘their’ Caleb.

But magic wasn’t real. But...Caleb didn’t know of any kind of computer simulation or even hallucination that looked and smelled and tasted so real.

He wasn’t eating  _ dirt _ , that wasn’t how he knew it tasted like anything. But the pink firbolg had given him some chamomile tea (or something) to calm down. He said his name was Caduceus, and didn’t seem that bothered that he was the only one Caleb didn’t recognize. 

“Don’t worry, our Caleb’s not the only one who’s good at magic,” Caduceus said gently, seeing how Caleb’s gaze was fixed on Nott. “I’m sure Nott will figure something out to put you back. We were kinda in the middle of something, but we’re not gonna drag you around with us and keep you stranded here, that would be...I mean, kind of mean, for starters.”

“Thanks,” Caleb said very quietly. He was trying not to speak so much, so Caduceus wouldn’t notice how fast his breathing was still coming. 

The whole world smelled strange, earthy and...something else Caleb couldn’t identify. Was this what nature was supposed to smell like? He’d lived his whole life in cities, maybe that was it. 

It wasn’t reassuring, the way everybody except Nott and Caduceus was keeping a close watch on the forest surrounding them. Caleb hadn’t missed the way there were a bunch of dead, semi-human bodies half hidden in the undergrowth. Caduceus told him they had been attacked by harpies, when he asked.

Caleb didn’t really want to know what the answers to all of his other questions would be if he asked them. Like why everybody was so heavily armed in the first place. 

“Ugh,I just realized,” Beau, who was standing nearby, said in an undertone to Fjord. “If this takes longer than a day, we’re going to have to camp the normal way. We don’t have the dome.”

“Fuck,” Fjord said, with heart. 

“Maybe it’s not that bad?”

“No? How dangerous do you think this place is? We already had to ditch the horses.” 

“We can handle ourselves. We did okay with Kiri, she’s still good.”

“Are you...comparing kid Caleb to a six year old bird?” Caleb could hear Fjord’s suspicious squint.

“Maybe.”

A bird? What? Caleb tried to stop listening. He looked warily around at the trees. Were they normally that dark, or was the sun starting to set? Was he going to be trapped here overnight?

“Hey!” Nott’s voice rose out of the encroaching night. “I think I got it to do - well -  _ something...” _

* * *

“Where did you get two cats?” Jester crowed in delight as they crowded into Caleb’s room.

“Those are the other two,” he said. Jester froze in the middle of heading over to, presumably, pet them. “Don’t touch. They’re probably confused enough being cats, they’ll bite you.”

“The other two...robbers?” Fjord clarified slowly. Caleb yanked the desk chair away from the minuscule desk, and hauled the unconscious figure up into it.

“Yes. Get me my rope out of my bag.”

“Oh, shit, good idea.” Fjord was very obliging, or at least the most willing to listen to Caleb's common sense. Caleb appreciated that.   


“Do you know any sailor’s knots?”

“Maybe?”

Caleb sighed. “Never mind. I can do it myself.”

“How did you knock her out so fast?” Beau quizzed him as he tied up the only humanoid robber left. “We didn’t hear anything until the gunshot.”

“I am quick on the draw, when I need to be.”

“But she’s still unconscious,” Jester observed, sitting on the edge of the unoccupied bed. Neither of the Polymorphed cats had yet tried to jump off the side and see if they had a cat’s skill at landing on all four feet. 

“I can wake her up.”

“How - oh!” Jester shrieked and jerked backwards as Caleb slapped the unfortunate robber full across the face. In his defense, it worked. He had seen her lolling back to consciousness as he tied her up.

_ “Ow,  _ what the  _ fuck,”  _ she groaned as Caleb bent his knees slightly so that they were eye to eye. She jerked as she realized she was tied to a shitty chair, hands bound behind her back and legs bound to chair legs. 

“Guten morgen,” said Caleb. “I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.” 

His opinion of the robber went up half a notch when he saw how quickly she assessed the situation. Her eyes flickered between the cats and every single person in the room before focusing on Caleb.

“You!” She said.

“You recognize me? Good, that answers a few of them already. I suppose your mask is in your car?”

She flushed, a stubborn set aligning her jaw higher than it had been a moment ago. “Where are J- where are my friends?”

She’d caught herself before she could reveal their names. Unfortunate. 

“Enjoying themselves,” Caleb replied sarcastically, leaning to the side so she could get a look at the bed. Her eyes widened in confusion, then shock, swiveling back to Caleb.

“You did that - with magic?”

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. You three seem to have accomplished quite a feat of magic yourself.”

The girl swallowed nervously. “I - it really did work, we didn’t imagine that?”

“It would seem not.” Caleb leaned in closer. “Tell me how you did it.”

“I don’t know.”

“I have rendered you unconscious once. It would be very easy to do so again. It would be extremely easy to take any of you and make sure you stay awake during whatever I would care to do to you.”

“You wouldn’t,” the girl said brashly, her gaze darting over Caleb’s shoulder. He did not look to see what the expressions on the teens’ faces were. 

“If you think I care what a bunch of strangers who cannot stop me think of me, you are severely mistaken,” Caleb said in a low voice. “You have a very short amount of time to start talking before I lose patience. Choose your next words wisely.”

She scoffed, but she was clearly nervous. Caleb saw her tug at her bonds again, futilely. “Don’t pretend you don’t understand how it works better than we do,” she said. “Aren’t you the one who’s been messing with it?”

“Messing with it?” Caleb repeated. “In what way am I supposedly messing with it, from such a distance?”

“It keeps flashing. We can’t get rid of it. It feels like someone’s...knocking.” The girl shuddered. “We came here to force you to make it stop.”

Caleb watched her very carefully for a long moment. Then he stood abruptly, realizing exactly what kind of people might be ‘knocking’.

“Thank you very much,” he said. “I believe we’ll be leaving.” 

“What - hey!” The woman struggled as Caleb swept his coat on over his shoulders, ignoring the twinge in his side. “At least untie me!”

“You can sit here and wait for the spell on your friends to run out,” Caleb told her indifferently, throwing his scarf on. “I’m sure one of them will be friendly enough to oblige. I assume you went back to the same house from last night?”

“Fuck you!”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Get your car moving again,” Caleb told Fjord. “We need to get back there, as fast as possible.”

“I - are you sure?”

_ “Very.”  _ Caleb  _ hoped  _ he was right. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have a final exam tomorrow that i need to do well on pls be nice to me


	5. new friend has entered the scene!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short and sweet, to tide us all over during these times of quarantine. I can't believe I was procrastinating by writing - gasp - *original fic*

The car ride was deafeningly silent. 

Caleb spent it all half dozing, just awake enough to be alert in case someone tried to do anything to him, while at the same time resting thoroughly enough to recover one or two of the spell slots he’d used up. It was early in the morning, far too early to be down two fourth-level slots. 

They had passed the trio of amateur magicians’ car, easily identifiable as it was the only unfamiliar one in the lot. On Nott’s recommendation, Caleb had used a magic missile to puncture three of the tires. He hoped that would delay them further, once the hour of Polymorph ran out. 

A strange artificial tune rang out, making all five of them jump. Jester fumbled in her pink backpack, and pulled out the much-decorated rectangle.

“Shit, it’s Molly,” she said. Caleb jerked again in surprise. “What do I say? Do I answer?”

“Of course you answer, you wouldn’t ignore a call unless something was really wrong,” Fjord said. “Don’t worry him.”

“Fuck that, tell him everything,” Beau interjected, leaning forward. Caleb listened to the conversation progress, paralyzed and barely breathing. “Molly’s into shit like this. Astrology, you know.”

_ “Astrology?”  _ Fjord repeated incredulously. “How is this astrology?”

“I’m picking up!” Jester shrieked, and put the rectangle up to her ear. “Hi, Molly!” 

Caleb could very faintly hear a voice coming out of the rectangle. Was it like a Sending spell? A rectangular Sending  _ stone?  _ He couldn’t tell if it sounded like...well, Mollymauk.

Gods above, Mollymauk.

“Oh shit, you would not believe what’s going on here,” Jester sighed with deep feeling. Seeing her head turn slightly, Caleb closed his eyes again and leaned against the headrest as if he were asleep before she could finish turning and see his eyes open. “Maybe you could - oh, he’s asleep.”

“He’s been asleep the entire car ride,” Nott said. Caleb felt a pinch to his arm through his coat. He pretended to stir slightly, then settle back into stillness. “See?”

“Don’t pinch him,” Jester lectured. There was another burble of crackly voice, a response from the rectangle. Jester launched into a response to whatever Mollymauk had said, jumping and skipping over the events of the past two days. It was relatively comprehensive, if less coherent.

Mollymauk said something else. “Fine, I’ll put you on speaker and  _ Fjord  _ can tell you,” Jester sulked. “Fjord, tell him I’m telling the truth.”

“I wouldn’t believe it either if I weren’t living through it right now,” Fjord sighed. The voice that came in response was louder, and very, very audible.

“You are telling me,” said something very much like Mollymauk’s voice, “that not only do  _ alternate universes  _ exist, but  _ versions of ourselves in those universes  _ do too and I’m not even  _ there.  _ And it’s  _ Caleb _ .”

“It’s your own fault for volunteering to go on Yasha’s camping trip with her,” Beau pointed out.

“This was solidarity! We’re having a great time! Just not an  _ alternate universe time! _ ” Mollymauk’s tone was hard to read behind the crackle. Caleb was trying very hard to keep his face slack and expressionless. “I need photographic evidence immediately.”

“We could send you a picture,” Beau said.

“I didn’t take any pictures,” Jester said. “Did you take any pictures?”

“No, but he’s asleep. We can take one or two now.”

“Y’all are being creepy,” Fjord said despairingly. 

“Well, what do you want to do?” Nott challenged him. Jester shushed her, and Nott lowered her volume slightly. “Wake him up?”

Silence.

“Jester, did you skip something?” Mollymauk’s voice asked. Jester, who had skipped over the details of Caleb’s interrogation, was silent.

“There’s a lot going on,” Beau said eventually. “You don’t have to stress about it, we’re gonna fix it.”

“Fix what?” The alarm in Mollymauk’s voice was strong enough to come through clearly. “Are you guys okay? We can come back-”

“No, no,” Fjord interrupted. “You’re way out in the wilderness or whatever, it’ll take days for us to meet up. This’ll get fixed quicker than that, promise. We’re not in any danger.”

This world’s Fjord was a good liar too, it seemed. Caleb couldn’t tell how much he believed that.

“Okay,” Mollymauk said slowly, drawing out the vowels. “Well...what about this alt-Caleb? What’s he like?”

“Old,” Nott said.

“He’s not that old,” Fjord said. “He’s...intense, though.”

“I think he’s a big cat person too,” Jester announced.

Mollymauk laughed. “Yeah, it’s  _ Caleb.” _

“That’s not guaranteed. Unless it is? What if there’s a universe where Caleb is a dog person?” Caleb had to  _ really  _ work to stop himself from wincing. Jester sounded so peppy about it, too. 

“This Caleb’s all renaissance-y,” Beau interrupted. “I don’t think he knows what electricity is, he kept looking at the lights and the TV in our room weird.”

“He dresses nice, though,” Nott acknowledged. “He’s not like, a peasant during the Black Death. When was that, eleven hundred?”

“1400s,” Beau immediately corrected. 

“Nerd.”

“What  _ is  _ he dressed like?” Mollymauk asked, sounding deeply interested in the answer. Caleb didn’t care to read deeper into that. It was Mollymauk.

“I’ll just send you a picture. He’s not going to exist in this universe soon, it’s probably good to have evidence that this happened, right?” Beau asked, and got nothing verbal as an answer. “For us, at least.”

“What’s the alternative to explain it all, a collective bad trip?” Fjord muttered, but he didn’t object again. There was a strange noise like a hoarse bird’s caw mixed with a sharp  _ click _ , twice. The sound was identical both times. 

“I’m gonna text it to Yasha, don’t hang up,” Beau announced. A crackly sigh was Mollymauk’s response, but he waited silently for the picture to arrive. Caleb wondered how they’d recorded his image so fast.

“Oooh,” said Mollymauk appreciatively after a moment. “That’s a nice coat. How come our Caleb doesn’t have the same fashion sense? Look, the lining’s all shiny and patterned. That’s style.”

“You’re only saying that ‘cause it looks like your coat,” said Beau flatly.

“It does not in the least,  _ you’re  _ only saying that ‘cause they’re both made of purple fabric.”

“He has a point,” contributed Nott. “You can barely see the purple anymore under all that embroidery.”

“See? Thank you.” Mollymauk sounded smug. 

The conversation wandered pointlessly from there, all of the people in the car tiptoeing around telling Mollymauk exactly what it was they were doing. Caleb hung onto every word, manging to never quite be honest with himself about  _ why. _

“We’re here,” Fjord said eventually. “Sorry, Molly - conversation’s gotta be over.”

“Good luck!” Mollymauk chirped. Fjord reached over and pressed a button - the phone’s bright screen went dark.

“Now’s the time to wake him up, I think,” Fjord said.

“I am already awake,” said Caleb. All of them jumped. “Let us go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D


	6. reunion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pls be proud of me for finishing this its 11pm and theres a plague on
> 
> pardon my grammar i spent all of it on this chapter

The house was quiet, and almost exactly as they had left it. The door was locked, but a simple Knock took care of that, although Caleb was loath to spend yet another spell slot so soon. The shelf in the basement had been put back upright; Fjord and Jester moved it carefully out of the way without knocking it over, exposing the secret door behind it. 

Caleb sighed as soon as he laid eyes on the magic circle again. It had not, as he’d hoped, been repaired; there were still large patches of blank smudges scattered through it. “I really do sometimes hate having to draw these things in chalk.”

“You didn’t draw this one, though,” Nott pointed out.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s always chalk, that’s what the spell requires.” Caleb crouched down to examine it. The circle seemed quiet, unassuming. “How do you imagine one would ‘knock’ on something like this?”

“I don’t know,” Jester said. “If it was someone knocking with their fist on the other side, would that do anything?”

“What’s the ‘other side’ in a situation like this?” Beau crossed her arms. “It’s on the floor.”

“Yes. But there is still another side. I must have stepped into a circle similar to this one, in order to come here. With circles, there are always two.” Caleb tilted his head, searching for something he hadn’t already noticed. 

_ Bum bum bum bum. _

There was no noise, but the circle faintly crackled with light, four faint flashes in a row. Dust skittered away from it on the floor. Beau leaped back in surprise. Caleb flattened himself to the floor, watching the circle closely. He had seen a pattern of light even in the smudged and blank patches.

“What was that?” Fjord demanded.

“I suspect,” Caleb said, barely listening, “Knocking.”

* * *

The cat kept coming to bother Caleb while the rest of them were busy messing with the circle. 

Caleb didn’t think it was a normal cat. Nothing else was normal in this weird world where his friends were old and scarred and wore armor and swords, so why would cats be? Plus he’d tried ‘pspsps’ing at it and it wouldn’t even think about coming near him, not even when he blinked slowly at it. 

He hadn’t even noticed it until Caduceus got up to go talk to the others over Nott’s head while she fiddled with the circle. It must have been hiding in the grass. It looked an awful lot like his Frumpkin back home, which had excited Caleb, but the cat only prowled just out of his reach and looked at him with flattened ears. 

Maybe Frumpkin could tell he was Caleb, but not the right Caleb. “Listen, I’m as upset about this as you,” Caleb told the cat, but he only got a lofty “Mrrow” in response and a disdainful tail flick. Caleb decided to try and ignore it. If it was Frumpkin, it still didn’t quite... _ move  _ like a normal cat. Maybe it wasn’t a cat at all, not really. 

Caleb did take advantage of not being paid any attention to. His phone had enough battery left for him to take it out and very subtly scan it around, taking a video that recorded his surroundings and especially the strange group clustered around the circle. He wondered what they would all think of themselves. He wondered why there wasn’t a Molly for his own friend to gasp at the strange appearance of.

After a while, the cat left him alone and trotted back over to the circle with the rest of them, tail held high. 

* * *

The ‘knocks’ came unbearably slowly. Whenever they did, Caleb would fling himself at the circle, moving to sketch the missing parts of the circle in with chalk before his guide could vanish. 

What he needed was one good look at the complete circle, and then he could finish the one on his side. The flashes of incandescence were helpful, but too vague. Caleb wished he could connect, somehow, with Frumpkin, if Frumpkin was still on the other side to look at the complete circle. 

But slowly, things started to come together. Caleb got a few runes in the right places and was able to guess without seeing another ‘knock’ which ones would correctly finish them. He started biting his fingernails in between flashes, barely daring to let his eyes move away from his work in case he missed something important. He barely noticed the way the teenagers were talking amongst themselves, sitting sprawled out on the ground on the other side of the room so as not to bother him. 

“Come on...” He tapped his chalk against his leg, ignorant of the way it was leaving marks on his pants. Even if he completed the circle, it might only work if the other Caleb were standing on it. Whoever was on the other side...it had to be the Mighty Nein, didn’t it? One of them had figured out how to ‘knock’ like they were. Surely they could understand that they still had to exchange one Caleb for another once they had his attention.

_ Bum bum bum bum. _

Jester yelped at Caleb’s sudden flurry of movement. He finished a line, scrawling three more runes into place. The rest of the runic equation seemed to write itself out before him even as the light faded, blurry shapes being replaced by his quick, straight chalk lines.  _ This  _ part Caleb understood - it was lucky the parts that had been accidentally erased were all to do with teleportation and not whatever trans-universal mind-bending properties the original conjurer had come up with.

Caleb stopped on the last rune. Was that it? He leapt to his feet and stalked around the circle’s circumference, searching for any gap that might provoke disaster, any hole in the array that might make the magic backfire or fail. 

“What? Are you done?” Beau scrambled to her feet as well. “Does it work now?”

“Maybe,” Caleb muttered distractedly. He heard the teens shuffling around as he made a second circuit. He couldn’t see anything that looked incomplete. But he couldn’t see any way to simply make the circle light up, either. How was whoever was on the other side signaling? He needed to send some kind of signal back in order to let them swap. 

Perhaps if he...

Caleb dug out his spellbook to sketch an idea on the pages rather than going straight to chalk, checking it against the ancient entry for Dancing Lights and Prestidigitation. All he wanted was a light effect, after all. Both circles were linked, as in teleportation. If one lit up, so must the other, right?

“That looks complicated,” Beau said, peering over his shoulder. Caleb didn’t answer her.

“And pretty!” Jester chirped, leaning over his  _ other  _ shoulder. Caleb paused, looked at his work, and conceded the point. To Jester, it probably did.

“It should work, that is all I need,” he said, crouching once more to the ground and retrieving his chalk. 

“Will it?” Nott asked anxiously, creeping up behind the other girls. 

“If I have done my work right.”

“And  _ have  _ you?”

Caleb sighed, aggravated, and lifted his chalk for a moment to look her in the eye. “I promise you, I want to go back as badly as you want your friend back. Please let me concentrate.”

Nott held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. Caleb turned back to the floor.

He hesitated to touch the extra addition when it was done, but he had to if it was going to work. Caleb settled for a feather-light brush of his fingertips, even as he summoned arcane energy to flow through them. Light crackled around the circle, and then Caleb yanked his hands away.

“It did something!” Jester said eagerly. All four of them were crowding close, but Caleb waved them away.

“We don’t want any of you going in accidentally,” he said, and they backed away further, suddenly anxious. Caleb wondered if he should light it up again. He hadn’t been able to make a pattern out of the light like a knock, just a single blaze of energy. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe the people knocking weren’t his friends, maybe this was just a dead end-

_ Bum bum bum bum. _

Caleb slammed his hand down and sent his own amber light flowing through the circle as the last of the greenish knocking faded. As soon as he pulled back the green returned, just once, mimicking him. Nearly dizzy with relief (and perhaps still his unhealed wounds - he was beginning to realize he had a pounding stress headache and his side still stung) Caleb tucked his spellbook away, and went to retrieve his pack.

“What are you doing?” Fjord asked.

“The most likely option is that my friends are on the other side,” Caleb said. “If they have your friend they know the circle is how he got here, so the circle is how he will likely get back. They know someone on this end has signalled to them. If they are smart, and they are...”

He trailed off. All five of them looked at the circle. It was not shining not anymore, but a few little jumps of light had burst on it for a second, like a pair of feet walking into the center. 

Caleb walked across the room, heart beating fit to burst, and stepped into the center of the circle.

Nothing. Of course. It still needed magic.

Caleb drew in a breath and let his fingertips crackle with arcane power. He could hear more than feel his hair frizz with static, and the hem of his coat drifted slightly with a nonexistent breeze. He squeezed his eyes shut, and pushed all the power he had into the circle, half a millisecond after it began to light up green.

It was not at all like teleportation. He had felt it for a moment, before, but the memory was fuzzy behind the pain and dimness of being cracked over the head with a large club. It was much worse than teleportation; it felt like being torn and rent apart, somewhere between being whisked halfway across the world and falling into the beacon’s grey depths with no hope of getting back out. Caleb gasped as the feeling spat him out, and would have fallen insensate on the ground if arms hadn’t caught him.

_ “Caleb!” _

Voices were there all at once, crowding in around him, and a different skinny set of arms caught him fiercely tight around the waist. Caleb squinted open an eye, and then jerked his head back as Frumpkin leaped up onto his shoulders, yowling his protest at losing track of Caleb for so long.

Ah. Everything was alright, then. It had worked. 

For the moment, Caleb allowed himself to relax and sag into the arms of his friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> originally i was going to get real wild and like, have both groups actually interact with each other, maybe while some more harpies showed up to fight, but u know what. i like this ending better. sometimes its not all about killing things u know


End file.
